Eurogamer: Microsoft still hasn't made the case for Xbox Series X

[Playstation Tablet 1,722]

Lmao the whole thing was such a disaster.  This is almost XBox One level media bashing. 

 

 

 

Let's get the obvious comparison out of the way, now that we can compare the summer's two great trailer showcases - separated this year by six weeks rather than the usual day and a half: Sony edged it.
Neither PlayStation nor Xbox delivered a slam dunk when making the software case for their new hardware launches this year.

Xbox's showcase last night was bookended by a gameplay demo of Halo Infinite - a very tangible prospect, to be fair, but one which you will be able to play on Xbox One and which was reportedly captured on PC - and a teaser reveal for a new Fable that, while cute, had little to add to the rumours of its existence that have circulated for years. Much of what filled the space between them was interesting, exciting or both, from the emotional lockdown trailer for Tetris Effect: Connected to the news that Fatshark was taking its trademark co-op chaos into the Warhammer 40K realm with Darktide. But most of it was frustratingly opaque.

Click to shrink...

Stalker 2's debut trailer was, it turned out, target footage. Forza Motorsport was present as a graphics demo with an ominous note that it was "early in development". Rare's Everwild, on second showing, remained as mysterious as it is lovely to behold. Xbox Studios prospects State of Decay 3 and Avowed got CG teasers only. There was, overall, a striking lack of gameplay footage - and, astonishingly, we still can't be sure that we have seen a game running on Xbox Series X.

Click to shrink...

Bearing in mind Halo Infinite's underwhelming looks, all of a sudden Xbox's pro-cross-gen stance sounds less like a strategy than like a rationale to explain away a last-gen game that got itself delayed into the launch window for the next console, and thus had to release on both - Zelda: Breath of the Wild style. (To be fair, we should note that PlayStation 5's launch game, Spider-man: Miles Morales, is an update and extension of a PS4 hit. Maybe you just can't launch with a proper generational exclusive in 2020.) But then, this view doesn't square with developer 343's assertion that Halo Infinite is a "platform for the future" that should last 10 years without getting a traditional sequel.

Click to shrink...

It is hard to believe that, as a new console generation approaches, Microsoft is once again fluffing its lines. The hardware reveal went well - unsurprisingly, since it had been so carefully rehearsed with Xbox One X a couple of years previously. But we have yet to see anything that shows those impressive stats in action, and corporate strategy seems once again to be getting in the way of what players want to see and hear.

This is not to say that the nightmare of 2013's Xbox One launch is about to be repeated. Then, a fuzzy Trojan-horse strategy about media convergence and owning the living room seemed to have little to do with video games. Now, Microsoft's vision for the future gaming is both far-sighted and persuasive, with its emphasis on streaming technology, device agnosticism and reaching the largest possible addressable audience.

If Satya Nadella's company isn't doing well at persuading us to buy consoles and games, that's probably because it doesn't really want to. What it wants to sell us is Game Pass subscriptions.

And yet, 2013 still has an important lesson to teach us. Microsoft fluffed it so hard then because it thought a pitch to the core gaming audience no longer mattered. It was wrong. This audience of tastemakers is still the hub the wider gaming community revolves around, and it really matters what excites them - what excites us. If your games don't thrill us, if your pitch seems driven by theory rather than passion, you are in trouble. Xbox still has work to do.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-07-24-microsoft-still-hasnt-made-the-case-for-xbox-series-x

[Teh_Diplomat 2,054]

Text: [Engage Stealth Mode] 

[Teh_Diplomat 2,054]

Quote

Let's get the obvious comparison out of the way, now that we can compare the summer's two great trailer showcases - separated this year by six weeks rather than the usual day and a half: Sony edged it. Neither PlayStation nor Xbox delivered a slam dunk when making the software case for their new hardware launches this year.

 

Quote

Xbox's showcase last night was bookended by a gameplay demo of Halo Infinite - a very tangible prospect, to be fair, but one which you will be able to play on Xbox One and which was reportedly captured on PC - and a teaser reveal for a new Fable that, while cute, had little to add to the rumours of its existence that have circulated for years. Much of what filled the space between them was interesting, exciting or both, from the emotional lockdown trailer for Tetris Effect: Connected to the news that Fatshark was taking its trademark co-op chaos into the Warhammer 40K realm with Darktide. But most of it was frustratingly opaque. 

 

Quote

Stalker 2's debut trailer was, it turned out, target footage. Forza Motorsport was present as a graphics demo with an ominous note that it was "early in development". Rare's Everwild, on second showing, remained as mysterious as it is lovely to behold. Xbox Studios prospects State of Decay 3 and Avowed got CG teasers only. There was, overall, a striking lack of gameplay footage - and, astonishingly, we still can't be sure that we have seen a game running on Xbox Series X.

 

Quote

Bearing in mind Halo Infinite's underwhelming looks, all of a sudden Xbox's pro-cross-gen stance sounds less like a strategy than like a rationale to explain away a last-gen game that got itself delayed into the launch window for the next console, and thus had to release on both - Zelda: Breath of the Wild style. (To be fair, we should note that PlayStation 5's launch game, Spider-man: Miles Morales, is an update and extension of a PS4 hit. Maybe you just can't launch with a proper generational exclusive in 2020.) But then, this view doesn't square with developer 343's assertion that Halo Infinite is a "platform for the future" that should last 10 years without getting a traditional sequel.

Quote

It is hard to believe that, as a new console generation approaches, Microsoft is once again fluffing its lines. The hardware reveal went well - unsurprisingly, since it had been so carefully rehearsed with Xbox One X a couple of years previously. But we have yet to see anything that shows those impressive stats in action, and corporate strategy seems once again to be getting in the way of what players want to see and hear.

 

Quote

This is not to say that the nightmare of 2013's Xbox One launch is about to be repeated. Then, a fuzzy Trojan-horse strategy about media convergence and owning the living room seemed to have little to do with video games. Now, Microsoft's vision for the future gaming is both far-sighted and persuasive, with its emphasis on streaming technology, device agnosticism and reaching the largest possible addressable audience.

 

Quote

If Satya Nadella's company isn't doing well at persuading us to buy consoles and games, that's probably because it doesn't really want to. What it wants to sell us is Game Pass subscriptions.

 

Quote

And yet, 2013 still has an important lesson to teach us. Microsoft fluffed it so hard then because it thought a pitch to the core gaming audience no longer mattered. It was wrong. This audience of tastemakers is still the hub the wider gaming community revolves around, and it really matters what excites them - what excites us. If your games don't thrill us, if your pitch seems driven by theory rather than passion, you are in trouble. Xbox still has work to do.

 

 

overall a scathing article and a factual assessment of Microsoft's inability to get from under their own feet.

 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by Teh_Diplomat

[Ike★ 2,906]

Good, Phil should be called out. I couldn't imagine having the same performance at my job and still being employed 7 years later.

[Goukosan 2,249]

LemiJ and the lemmings are claiming Forza "in engine" is the same as "in game" 

[Playstation Tablet 1,722]

I'm honestly shocked, I thought they were preparing for next gen with Scorpio binding their time. 

[Playstation Tablet 1,722]

 

 

 

[nitric 472]

Literally the worst company. 

[Teh_Diplomat 2,054]

 

 

 

 

 

[Playstation Tablet 1,722]

[nitric 472]

2 minutes ago, Teh_Diplomat said:

 

 

 

 

 

[Playstation Tablet 1,722]

Playstation 5 The Future of Gaming Show' had a 4 times bigger Audience than 'Xbox Games showcase

 

[-GD-X★ 7,728]

9 minutes ago, Teh_Diplomat said:

 

 

 

 

 

[Goukosan 2,249]

13 minutes ago, Teh_Diplomat said:

 

 

 

 

 

[Playstation Tablet 1,722]

 

[jehurey 3,222]

1 hour ago, Team 2019 said:

Playstation 5 The Future of Gaming Show' had a 4 times bigger Audience than 'Xbox Games showcase

 

[Remij 4,666]

1 hour ago, Goukosan said:

LemiJ and the lemmings are claiming Forza "in engine" is the same as "in game" 

It is.  God you're fucking dumb.  You really ARE dumb enough to think that Forza will have pre-rendered cutscenes though  

[Goukosan 2,249]

14 minutes ago, HALOmij said:

It is.  God you're fucking dumb.  You really ARE dumb enough to think that Forza will have pre-rendered cutscenes though  

Who said anything about Forza having ore rendered cut scenes clown. 

 

You're the one who thinks 30fps "in engine" footage is the same as what the "60fps real time gameplay" will look like 

[Remij 4,666]

3 minutes ago, Goukosan said:

Who said anything about Forza having ore rendered cut scenes clown. 

 

You're the one who thinks 30fps "in engine" footage is the same as what the "60fps real time gameplay" will look like 

That footage IS real time.  If you don't think it's real-time... then you're saying it's pre-rendered... idiot.  

 

Dude... you're not smart enough to win an argument against me regarding graphics and tech..  

[Teh_Diplomat 2,054]

Quote

 

"In-engine" is pre-rendered footage. In short - "in-game" refers to "realtime" and "in-engine" means pre-rendered. The core difference is that it was rendered using the game engine with actual game assets. There are many reasons to go this route and it's telling that "in-engine" trailers are almost exclusively reserved for new/unreleased titles. This is probably because it doesn't make sense to pour too many resources into optimizing a game trailer to run "realtime" at a steady frame rate on actual hardware.

 

So rather than wasting valuable dev time, the next best option is to allow the trailer to be created and pre-rendered using the game engine and assets. The pre-rendered trailer will closely represent the final game without having wasted developers time optimizing the trailer to run smoothly in realtime. An in-engine video lets you create a good representation of your game that is pre-rendered at whatever target fps you're aiming for without any need of optimization - so you get the footage out there while the developers are free to focus on the actual game.

 

Just to prevent @Goukosan &  @HALOmij from another 13 pages of arguments.

 

 

Basically you're both partially right.